MCFTM – MINE!

If you have ever been around children, you have heard them shout Mine! My wife and I have 5 kids and we have heard our fair share of these proclamations. Namely, around food, remote controls or iPads. What is that? At a young age, we put on display the sheer force of who we truly are. We panic when we think something is going wrong or is being taken from us so we proclaim, “Mine!” As you age, you learn that you can’t shout like this anymore, so you develop techniques that exude the same emotion without looking so immature. We cut people off on the freeway, we work the system to get to a place we think we deserve. Can’t you just hear it in your head, “Mine!” Ultimately, this “mine” mindset takes us to a place of loneliness and despair. 

Optimism and being in denial sit on a razor’s edge opposite each other. I don’t want to build a sandcastle of encouragement so it’s important that we be honest with one another. We are innately selfish and that leads to all sorts of bad life choices. I know your reading this and saying well…this is not encouraging. But in order to be encouraged you need to be honest and hit rock bottom. Rock bottom is a great foundation to rebuild and rediscover who you really are and who you are yet to become!

The opposite of the “mine” mentality is generosity. Mike Tyson once said, “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” This pandemic has been a punch in the face, and I have a plan to get our mind out of the boxing ring and back on track. I call this process the path to generosity. First off, we must be thankful for what we have. If you can’t think of something to be thankful for, start with the fact you can read this letter. Second, being thankful allows you to forgive others that may have intentionally or unintentionally hurt you. One of the amazing things about forgiveness is it leads to freedom. We often don’t realize that when we forgive, we are setting a prisoner free and more often than not that prisoner is us! Now that we have freedom, we rediscover joy. Joy is not a temperamental emotion; it is a state of mind that changes everything. Joy allows you to see others differently. You move from “mine” to ours. We have landed at our final destination of Generosity. 

Generosity is the vaccine for our selfish nature. The trick is that the only lab producing this vaccine is you. As your Chief Encouragement Officer, I implore you to walk the path to Generosity. There are 5 stations on this path and some of them may require longer stops than others. There is no timeline for this journey. Simply keep walking. Enjoy the walk and understand that you are perfectly and wonderfully made for this moment.